Day Three: Party like it’s 1986

Report by Laurens De Groot

Agadir, Morocco - After a one-and-a-half day break, the delegations came back together to talk about the proposal to uplift the ban on commercial. Within two hours, the first delegates walked out. A few of the NGO’s followed with happy faces. What happened? Finally, some good news out of this Moroccan Pandora’s box? Perhaps, but I guess it depends how you look at it. The idea to uplift the ban on commercial whaling and allow some controlled commercial whaling was wiped off the table. Of course, that is a good thing; it would be a ridiculous step back to allow commercial whaling and I assume that every normal human would see this as common sense.

However, it was celebrated as a great achievement. Isn’t that strange? The ban on whaling took effect in 1986. Being glad that the moratorium is still in place is basically saying that the whaling countries have so much power that they dictate the agenda of the IWC in order to get rid of the ban. We’re talking about just three countries. While the delegates had 24 years time to actually close the loophole, they are instead happy that the whaling ban is still in place. In my opinion, that’s an upside down world. There should never be a discussion on uplifting the ban, instead there should only be talk about stopping Japan, Iceland, and Norway from killing some of the most amazing creatures we share this planet with. And I still see very little effort to achieve that goal. The delegates stated that they ‘need a break to get over their indifferences’. I’m sorry, a break? I think the whales need a break from humans and that the delegates should spend every bloody second in Agadir to achieve that.

On a lighter note: The Japanese Whaling association (JWA) was pissed off and that’s always amusing. So –call it ironically- they used the second part of the day to address the aggression towards their whaling (research) ships by Sea Shepherd. Without Sea Shepherd being able to attend the meetings, I would like to thank the JWA for giving us a place on stage so the whole world could see that Sea Shepherd is still living up to it’s promise to save whales. The JWA stated that ‘they were tired of giving this presentation every year’. Yes, JWA you exhaust us too, so why don’t you just stop your illegal whaling activities and stay out of the Southern whale sanctuary? One problem solved.